


thaw

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Snow, winter is here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 02:56:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19966894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: The trees did not bloom the year after Jaime died.





	thaw

**Author's Note:**

> written 24 July 2019.

The trees did not bloom, the year after Jaime died.

Brienne saw the rains come, saw spring step forward — tremble — and give up: and she was not surprised when snow returned, and the people shivered, and children wept and starved.

She put her back to the everyday work of clearing paths and searching for green, as Sansa always requested.

She never found any. There was no green or growing thing under all that weight.

The snow fell and the children cried and Brienne simply worked.

Jaime had said: _You loved Renly?_ and Brienne hadn’t replied, why hadn’t she answered, how could she live with herself knowing she hadn’t spoken to him?

 _I loved him and I lost him and I healed from it,_ she should have said. _Tell me, when will I heal from you?_

She should have drowned him that day. She should have killed him before he mattered.

There will be a time, said Tyrion, when this is past. There will be time to remember the good parts.

Brienne could not remember anything but snow.

It piled on top of the stable roof and one night they woke to find that had rotted and fallen through, and then there was butchering and smoking to do, and meat, for a while.

I asked him to stay, she said silently to distant Tyrion, shoveling snow into a cart for it to be hauled away. I asked him to stay and I told him I loved him and he left anyway. Where is the good in that? Find it for me, bring it to me, because I am all frozen.

She woke, thinking Jaime was there.

 _Every time I sleep, I have two hands_ he had told her once. _And when I wake up I keep quiet a little while, because with my eyes shut it is still true._

She woke and kept her eyes shut and held still, still, impossibly still: and still the cold knowledge crept in at the sides of her mind.

She said to him: Loving you is a mortal wound.

And then she got up to work again, to clear the drifts and knock down icicles, to search for green and never find it, to look again and again for a blooming that would never come.

**Author's Note:**

> from the Auden -
> 
> “He was my North, my South, my East and West,  
> My working week and my Sunday rest”


End file.
